Nobody's Hero (Inspector Carlyle)

by James Craig

  God knows how anyone is supposed to make money selling fast food, Calvin thought unhappily. If he’d taken £200 so far today, it would be a miracle. There was no way he could cover his costs simply by selling kebabs. He watched Metcalf wipe some brown sauce from his chin and wished that he’d never come across the sick bastard. As usual, the whole thing was Aqib’s fault; the idiot wanting to look good in front of one of his Chelsea mates. Calvin knew that they should never have let white guys in on their little scheme. White guys always fucked things up.

  Why had he gone along with it? Basically, Aqib had whined like a child – well, he was a child, more or less – but still, he had moaned endlessly and Calvin had given in. It had been a big mistake, even before all this stuff with Taimur had brought the police round. Now he felt very nervous about the whole thing. But stopping it seemed impossible, particularly now that this stupid sod had discovered how to get laid by someone other than his wife.

  ‘So,’ Metcalf sat back in his chair, scratching his balls through the dirty denim of his trousers, ‘what have you got for me tonight?’

  Calvin felt sick. ‘I thought Aqib told you,’ he replied, trying to sound as forceful as possible, ‘we need to quieten things down for a while.’

  Metcalf glanced over at the other two, still chomping away on their burgers. ‘Aqib din’ tell me nuffink,’ he asserted, turning on the hard mockney accent to remind the foreigner who was the bloody boss here. ‘And I want a shag.’

  Gritting his teeth, Calvin tried to stand his ground. ‘After the last time . . .’

  ‘After the last time, nuthin’.’ Flinging the bottle past Calvin’s head, Metcalf watched with grim satisfaction as it smashed against the wall, sending pieces of brown glass scattering across the dirty floor. Calvin flinched. Stuffing the last of the bun into his mouth, Aqib looked up at Calvin and laughed, giving him a look that said don’t pretend you can fuck with Steve – you’re not in charge any more.

  ‘It was a one off and we dealt with it,’ Metcalf said cockily. ‘It’s history.’

  Calvin nodded, not believing a word of it.

  ‘There’s nuthin’ that can come back to any of us.’

  ‘Let’s hope not.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Metcalf’s eyes widened. ‘Has anyone come sniffin’ round?’

  ‘No. But—’

  ‘But nothin’.’ Debate over, the fat man folded his arms. ‘So it’s business as usual, my friend.’

  ‘Sure, Steve.’

  ‘And who’s this new girl Aqib’s told me about?’ Metcalf enquired eagerly. ‘I hear she’s a right slag.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  After maybe three hours adrift in the orange gloom, Taimur Rage realized that the shouts and the screams from the other cells were not going to stop. They would go on all night. He was in a loony bin.

  At least the guy he’d been put in with wasn’t a nutter. Lying back in his bed, Taimur listened to the snoring coming from the bunk above him – his cellmate was some foreign bloke who’d been fighting deportation for more than a year – and felt the pills in the palm of his hand. He had been expecting to get a visit from his mum, or at least his lawyer. Instead, it was Aqib who turned up at visiting time. He had a girl in tow that Taimur had never seen before. She was wearing a flimsy T-shirt and no bra. The warders certainly couldn’t get enough of her; when Aqib had passed him the pills no one was paying a blind bit of attention.

  ‘Your dad would’ve come,’ Aqib sniffed as he watched Taimur slip the small clingfilm packet into his boxers, ‘but he’s got the shop and that.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Aqib tugged at his hoodie. ‘That’s a 24-7 operation right there. You know the chavs working the till will rob him blind if he leaves them alone for a minute.’

  Taimur shrugged. He glanced at the girl across the table. She was grinning aimlessly at a monster bloke with a tattoo – some kind of snake that went all the way up his left arm – who was sitting at the next table. Tattoo Man was so taken by Taimur’s visitor that he barely acknowledged the woman who was sitting opposite him. She was a hard-looking bottle blonde with a baby on her lap and an unlit cigarette between her fingers. Yammering away at great speed, the blonde was laying in to Tattoo Man, complaining about money or something. She didn’t seem to notice that her man wasn’t listening.

  ‘Anyway,’ Aqib continued, lowering his voice theatrically as he gestured across the table, ‘those are good stuff.’ He whispered a designer-sounding name that Taimur didn’t recognize. ‘Got ’em wholesale from my man Steve.’

  The pills were probably aspirin or some shit like that, Taimur thought. Aqib was such a dick.

  ‘They’ll help take the edge off in here,’ Aqib explained, mistaking the amusement in Taimur’s face for enthusiasm. ‘Keep you mellow.’ He allowed himself a sneaky peek down the top of the girl’s T-shirt, licking his lips as he did so. ‘Or you can trade ’em with your mates, or whatever.’

  What mates? Taimur wondered.

  Without warning, the girl pitched forward in her chair. Showing decent reflexes, Aqib grabbed her arm, pulling her towards him before she could hit her head on the table. The blonde woman at the next table turned to see what was going on and gave the three of them a nasty grin.

  ‘Fuck, Nat!’ Aqib shrieked. ‘What you doing?’

  The girl started to giggle as a pair of guards watched them suspiciously.

  ‘C’mon. We need to walk.’ Getting up, Aqib dragged her to her feet. ‘Sorry, man, we better get outta here before someone decides she needs a drugs test. Be strong, hear?’ He waved his free hand in the air. ‘You a big man now, in here. Maximum security. Enjoy it.’

  His mind blank, Taimur watched the pair of them stumble towards the exit. The blonde woman at the next table went back to her complaint, and Tattoo Man tried to find something else to stare at. When the guard came to take Taimur back to his cell, he was already on his feet, good to go.

  The sound of footsteps on the landing outside died away as the warder continued his rounds. Above his head, his cellmate mumbled something in a language that he didn’t recognize and then promptly went back to sleep. As the man’s snoring resumed, Taimur reached down for the bottle of water he had placed on the floor. Propping himself up on his elbows, he pulled Aqib’s gift from inside his boxer shorts and carefully unwrapped the cling-fim. Inside it were six unmarked white tablets. Knowing Aqib, they were probably useless, but it was worth a go. Dropping them into his mouth, Taimur unscrewed the top of the bottle and took a long swig.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Where exactly was he? Page 378? 379? It had to be around there. Harry was just about to shoot someone and save the day.

  Good man, Harry. Good name, too.

  Harry Hole.

  Great name for a cop.

  Shame about his drinking problem.

  And his relationship problems.

  And all his other problems.

  Feeling rather smug, sitting pretty in his domestic cocoon, Carlyle looked over at Helen, perched on the edge of the sofa, her mobile jammed under her ear.

  ‘Well,’ she said, speaking into the phone, ‘if you can’t come up next week, maybe we could come down to the coast for a few days.’

  Uh, oh, Carlyle thought, she’s cooking something up with her mother. He shifted uneasily in his seat. It wasn’t that he had any particular cause to dislike his mother-in-law; it was just that he preferred it when he was in London and she stayed down in Brighton.

  ‘No, no, I think we would all come.’ Helen glanced up at her husband but he pretended not to notice. ‘John would like to come too. He could do with a bit of time by the sea. The fresh air would do him good.’

  Finding his page, the inspector shrank as far behind his book as possible and began reading. The bad guy was just about to be stopped in his tracks, as promised. This is what policing is supposed to be about, he thought happily. Shoot first and ask questions later.

  If only.

  Sadly, it was about as
far removed from reality as he could possibly imagine. You didn’t get many serial killers howling at the moon in Covent Garden.

  Waaa.

  The cry from down the hall was faint but clear. Carlyle stead-fastly refused to look up from his book. Ignore it, he told himself. It might go away.

  Waa. Waa.

  Just ignore it.

  ‘Hold on a second, Ma.’ Stretching across the sofa, his wife prodded him with a stockinged toe. Reluctantly, he looked up. From down the hall, the crying had mutated into a continuous complaint that was becoming steadily louder. ‘Go and see that Ella’s all right. Her nappy might need changing.’

  When he didn’t move, Helen waved the handset in front of his face. ‘I’m on the phone.’

  WAAA.

  Why don’t you get off the bloody phone, then? he thought grumpily. But Helen had already returned her attention to the conversation with her mother.

  ‘Yeah, just making John get off his backside to go and see to the baby . . . yes, she’s lovely . . . I know . . . no, it would be far too late for us to have another one now.’

  Too damn right, Carlyle thought. With a weary sigh, he tossed his book onto the table, struggled to his feet and padded towards the hall.

  Ella was lying in a travelling cot on their bed. By the time he reached her, the noise level had gone up another notch. As he bent down to pick her up, the inspector realized that Helen had been right. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Shit.’

  Taking a moment out from her wailing, the child looked up at him suspiciously. Even Carlyle had to admit she was a very pretty kid, her dark features showing traces of both of her parents. He tried a smile.

  Waa.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ He held up his hands in supplication. ‘Let’s get this done.’ Gently removing the child from her cot, he carefully carried her next door, breathing through his mouth as best he could.

  In anticipation of just such an occurrence, Helen had laid out a changing mat on the bathroom floor, along with all the required paraphernalia. Thankfully, Ella lapsed into a bemused silence as she watched the inspector free her legs and lower body from her romper suit and begin the delicate operation of removing the soiled nappy. ‘God,’ Carlyle grimaced, reaching for a nappy sack. ‘What the hell have you been eating, eh?’ Looking up, Ella gave him something that could have been interpreted as a smile. ‘That was a monster.’ Dropping the nappy into the sack, he tied the drawstrings and lobbed the offending article into the bath. How long is it since I did this for Alice? he wondered, knowing that his daughter wouldn’t want to be reminded of those not so long ago but long gone days. He looked at Ella and smiled. ‘You’ll be grown up too, before you know it.’ All he got by way of reply was a broad yawn. ‘Understood.’ Reaching for the wipes, Carlyle began carefully cleaning the child’s arse. ‘Give me a minute and we’ll get you back in bed.’

  When he made it back to the living room, Helen was still on the phone to her mum. She looked up and he gave her a nod to signify that everything was all right. Ella had fallen asleep almost before he had left the room. Domestic peace had been restored. Reaching over, he kissed his wife gently on the top of her head. For a moment, it was almost as if they had gone back in time. Returning to the sofa, he picked up his book and returned to his page. Finally, it was time to learn a thing or two about proper policing.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Three missed calls from Bernie Gilmore were by no means the ideal start to the day. The journalist would either want to berate the inspector for not dropping a tip in his lap or, alternatively, try and winkle something out of him. There was nothing that Bernie liked more than some nice piece of juicy information that Carlyle should sensibly keep to himself. ‘God, Bernie,’ he grumbled to himself, ‘what makes you think I know anything?’ He didn’t have any such titbits to share, whether he wanted to or not. Hell, that was the whole point of being a copper – you spent your entire life coming to terms with your basic lack of information.

  Happily, by the time the inspector reached the front steps of the station, Bernie Gilmore had been completely forgotten.

  Slipping unobtrusively through the reception, keeping an eye out for any familiar faces on the benches, he was intercepted by Michelangelo Federici, creeping up on his blindside.

  ‘Inspector.’

  Oh shit. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’ Carlyle asked grumpily.

  Federici looked around nervously. Clearly, the lawyer was not keen to be discussing his business in such a public space. ‘Can we talk upstairs?’

  Carlyle sighed. He had a lot to get through this morning and already he was running late. But Federici seemed a decent enough sort – for a lawyer. The inspector pointed past the front desk, towards the doors leading into the station proper. ‘Sure. Let’s go and find a room. It’ll need to be quick, though.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Smiling, Federici immediately signalled to a small black woman in an expensive-looking business suit sitting on a nearby bench. The woman jumped up as if she had been given an electric shock and scuttled over. ‘Inspector, this is Taimur Rage’s mother.’

  Hovering beside her lawyer, Elma Reyes shot Carlyle a hard look but said nothing.

  Nice to meet you too, Carlyle thought, scowling at the lawyer who had so shamelessly tricked him. ‘Uhuh.’

  ‘We need to discuss developments,’ Federici continued.

  So now, all of a sudden, she wants to get involved? Well, it’s a bit bloody late. The only development we’re going to get now is her lad going to jail for a long time. Turning on his heel, the inspector headed towards the doors. ‘Follow me.’

  Finding an empty interview room on the first floor, Carlyle pushed open the door and ushered his guests inside. ‘Please, take a seat.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Michelangelo Federici pulled out a chair and invited his client to sit down. Silently, Elma Reyes obliged. Federici took the seat next to her.

  The inspector stepped over to the window. There was a pause while his guests waited for him to speak. When he failed to oblige, Federici took the initiative. ‘What happened last night was truly devastating.’

  ‘Hm.’ What the hell was he talking about? Gazing through the glass, Carlyle kept his back to the table.

  ‘For Taimur to be able to take his own life while under the care and protection of the state is a dreadful indictment of the prison service.’

  Shocked, Carlyle maintained his silence.

  ‘The fact that this vulnerable young man was able to obtain and use as yet unidentified drugs while supposedly under round-the-clock supervision will,’ the lawyer continued, ‘surely be a matter of some detailed investigation.’

  Why had no one told him about this?

  ‘In the meantime, it almost beggars belief that these services were outsourced to a private contractor.’

  In the courtyard below, he caught sight of the top of WPC Mason’s head as she climbed into a squad car. Maybe that’s what Bernie was ringing about, he thought. It wouldn’t be the first time that the shaggy journalist had known more about one of his investigations than Carlyle himself.

  ‘Legal action will almost certainly follow.’

  Get to the point, Carlyle thought, you’ve used up all of my goodwill already.

  ‘However, our main interest is in truth and justice for the family.’

  Yeah, right, you ambulance-chasing bastard.

  ‘Ms Reyes has lost her son. And nothing anyone can say or do can bring him back.’

  ‘Yes.’ Finally, the inspector turned away from the window and took a seat on the opposite side of the table, holding the mother’s stony gaze as he did so. ‘Please accept my deepest condolences.’

  Elma Reyes gave the merest of nods. A grim mask had settled on her face. If she had shed any tears for her son, they were long gone.

  ‘This must be a very difficult time for you.’ The inspector paused, counting to three in his head. ‘What is it that I can do to be of assistance?’

  Federici started to say something but El
ma Reyes held up a hand to silence him. ‘Arrest the people that killed him,’ she said, jabbing an accusing finger at the inspector. ‘Do your job for once.’

  Gritting his teeth, Carlyle looked at the lawyer. Regardless of the circumstances, he didn’t like being criticized, and certainly not by a civilian.

  ‘Ms Reyes believes that her ex-husband, Calvin Safi, and his associates are ultimately responsible for this tragedy,’ said Federici.

  ‘By ultimately responsible, you mean . . .’

  ‘They gave him the drugs,’ Elma said flatly.

  The inspector thought about that for a moment. ‘When he was arrested, Taimur was tested for drugs – I don’t think they found anything. Are you saying that he had a history of—’

  ‘No.’ Elma glared at him as if he was a stupid child, trying her patience. ‘Taimur never did anything like that. That’s why it was so easy to lead him astray.’

  ‘And why would they want to do that?’

  ‘Good God.’ Elma turned her wrath on her lawyer. ‘I thought you said this one wasn’t totally stupid.’

  Federici shrugged apologetically. Whether the gesture was for the benefit of his client or the policeman, it was not clear.

  Looking at the lawyer, Carlyle tried to change tack. ‘I thought that Mr Safi was your client also?’

  ‘I pay the bills.’ Elma Reyes angrily slapped her hand down on the table. ‘Those heathens corrupted my boy, they’re the ones to blame. My son would never have ended up dead on drugs if he’d been under my roof.’

  But he wasn’t, Carlyle thought, was he? All these people who came crying to him after the event; why didn’t they manage to pull their finger out before the shit hit the fan? It was so much easier just to whine about it afterwards. Taking the deepest of breaths, he tried to locate an atom of sympathy from somewhere in his being. ‘Mrs . . .’

  ‘Ms,’ Federici reminded him. ‘Ms Reyes.’

  ‘Ms Reyes,’ the inspector repeated, ‘do you have any evidence to support what you are saying here?’

  A look of such pure fury passed across Elma Reyes’ face that for a moment he thought she was about to reach across the table and try to rip his face off with her bare hands. However, as it passed, she slumped back into her chair and folded her arms. ‘Isn’t that your job – to find the proof?’